Jayco bed causing rear wall to bow out
Jayco bult the back wall of the 28 FKS a little oddly, with the hinged bed having no other support than the back wall. I noticed last year that my back wall was bowed out, and that it had pulled awa...
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Four months later, and I finally repaired the damage. In5r and I had communicated back and forth after my original post, and he had some suggestions.
I sent the pics to my local RV dealer, and they wanted $2500 to repair it. Ha. Instead I mulled it over, and waited for work to settle down (and for camping season to end!).
I just completed the repair this evening, having started this past Sunday. From start to finish (not counting trips to the store), it took me about 12 hours to fix it.
There was no water damage.
All of the damage was caused by shoddy design by Jayco, where the pneumatic bed lifts were spending 99.9% of their time not lifting the bed, but pushing the bed frame back against the wall.
Jayco (and probably other manufacturers) use staples to tack everything together. The rear wall was a large upper frame, set atop a smaller, inward slanting bottom frame. These are stupidly just loosely stapled together. The hinged beam that holds the bed was attached to the wall with just three screws at the bottom of the upper frame. The strong backward pressure of those pneumatic lifts cracked the frame, and caused it to bow out.
I removed the lifts - they couldn't hold the mattress up anyway. I then removed the bottom three aluminum skin panels on the back wall. I replaced the floating bed hinge-beam with 2x6 running from wall to wall, which now sits atop three shaped 2x6 pillars. These are attached to the side walls, and then all the joints have metal joist joiners locking them in place. I drilled holes through all of the rear wall joists, then secured them to the new interior beam with 3" wood screws. The newly secure wall is flat, and snug to the new beam.
Pics of the process can be seen here: Redwolf's Trailer Repair Pics @ Flickr
I sent the pics to my local RV dealer, and they wanted $2500 to repair it. Ha. Instead I mulled it over, and waited for work to settle down (and for camping season to end!).
I just completed the repair this evening, having started this past Sunday. From start to finish (not counting trips to the store), it took me about 12 hours to fix it.
There was no water damage.
All of the damage was caused by shoddy design by Jayco, where the pneumatic bed lifts were spending 99.9% of their time not lifting the bed, but pushing the bed frame back against the wall.
Jayco (and probably other manufacturers) use staples to tack everything together. The rear wall was a large upper frame, set atop a smaller, inward slanting bottom frame. These are stupidly just loosely stapled together. The hinged beam that holds the bed was attached to the wall with just three screws at the bottom of the upper frame. The strong backward pressure of those pneumatic lifts cracked the frame, and caused it to bow out.
I removed the lifts - they couldn't hold the mattress up anyway. I then removed the bottom three aluminum skin panels on the back wall. I replaced the floating bed hinge-beam with 2x6 running from wall to wall, which now sits atop three shaped 2x6 pillars. These are attached to the side walls, and then all the joints have metal joist joiners locking them in place. I drilled holes through all of the rear wall joists, then secured them to the new interior beam with 3" wood screws. The newly secure wall is flat, and snug to the new beam.
Pics of the process can be seen here: Redwolf's Trailer Repair Pics @ Flickr
